Commonplace

There is a great two part article (links to Part 1 and Part 2) over at the DIY Planner blog about the history and keeping of a Commonplace book. Commonplace books were very popular among artists, writers, scholars, inventors and other creative types for centuries as a way of capturing snippets of important information, images, ideas and other stuff that one wanted to be able to permanently reference. Upon reading it I realized that I have been keeping a digital version of this for some time in a Notetaker notebook. Notetaker is an excellent resource for exactly this type of thing and I have discussed my usage of it previously. I was just not aware that the way in which I was using it was so functionally similar to a time tested and honored practice.
This has spurred me into putting a bit more thought into how I actually have my “Notetaker Commonplace” organized and how much more I could be using it for. It also has me thinking that I may eventually need to put together an “analog” one as well to capture all of those paper snippets that I would like to keep at fairly quick hand. I think about all of the little snippets that I have previously been at a loss on how or where to file and this would be a perfect solution.